


I'm Grounding All My Dreams

by mercurybard



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, F/M, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 16:15:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1716827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercurybard/pseuds/mercurybard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's the one who makes her cry</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Grounding All My Dreams

The tests and Jack and Haley…god, Haley. She’s never been one to get angry. Instead, she holds it inside until it leaks out as slow tears. They build in the corners of her eyes until she has to be seeing the world through a film of water. 

He’s the one who makes her cry more often than not. How could he have forgotten that Jack’s tests were today? Poor little bud, at the hospital being prodded by strangers and having electrodes stuck all over him. He’d meant to be there—he had. But then JJ had dragged him into her office to show him the video, and all thoughts of Jack had been pushed out of his head as he watched a serial killer blossom on the laptop screen in front of him.

Haley knows as well as he does that his offer to stay behind is hollow. His team is a good team, but he can’t trust them to function cohesively without him. Gideon still holds himself apart from the others because he’s too scared to let them get close only to lose them like he lost his last team (and that’s the only reason Aaron let him sit the watch beside Elle’s hospital bed instead of sending him home and taking his chair). They’ve just come off two brutal cases—the pedophile auction and the sadistic foile a deux in Jacksonville—so Garcia’s a mess from having to analyze torture videos (besides, Jason intimidates her in ways Aaron knows he’s never noticed, much less understood) and Morgan’s been rougher than usual with suspects. Elle’s still walking around with a hole in her chest that has nothing to do with the bullet wound. Hell, the only one who has it all together is JJ. He envies her that.

All he can do is whisper the same apologies Haley’s heard a thousand times and kiss her even as he’s walking away from their family, again. His greatest fear—the one he knows only Jason is perceptive enough to pick up on—is that one day, that family won’t be waiting for him when he returns.


End file.
